All in all an emotional day what with the Leavers Service just before the Retreat and then as JH says a whole 7 years of your life goes away...you never really have time to say goodbye properly to friends.

I found it really hard leaving CH this year. Marching through the arches at the end of the retreat was v. emotional! All the way through retreat I was concentrating so hard on getting it right and playing the drum 'splits' that it didn't hit me that this was the last time I was going to be in Housey, marching with the band in Quad! After the 'Splits' was over I could relax and reflect on it all, just standing there whilst the last post and everything was played.
It was sad taking off my drum and locking it away for the last time. I did write my name on the inside rim of it though, as is tradition for the senior drummer. The drum in the logo for this forum is the nice, shiny senior drummers' drum. I like to think that that drum is part mine forever!

One famous guy said "the world's a stage"...indeed the 7 years at CH are the time that you act out your growth into adulthood. Sure it's tough at the final curtain, but uni takes over quickly and a new sense of freedom is established as well as experimentation (?). new friendships are formed and perhaps also you find the love of your life...

You do the Trafalgar Square thing in your first year after CH, maybe a couple of OB days but then life kicks in and you move on to the next play. Geographical distances (I was in USA) hinder maintaining friendships and so you hope that a reunion or two will come your way.

But deep down the good name will always be with you and thanks to things like this Forum you can always have a link to other people's experiences, news and who knows maybe even come across some contemporaries (ViÃ¨r Blieu fro me).

My mother seems to live too much in the past and is forever talking about CH and I left in 1984!

It won't be the last time you feel like that, Alice. It's sad when every chapter comes to an end - I was sad saying goodbye to my tutors and moving out of my flat at the end of uni. I was heartbroken when a bunch of us were made redundant from a company I loved working for, and left at the same time. I'd been there about 14 years and the company was downsizing hugely in England and moving to much smaller premises, so I didn't even have the consolation of knowing it would all still be there, just the same, if I ever wanted to go and visit. But it's all part of moving on to the next chapter, and you get something positive from each chapter too. And the older you get, the more philosophical you become about it all.

A day's a lifetime for a day-old baby. And eight years at CH is nearly half a lifetime if you leave at 19.( Eight years ago now is like yesterday.) And given the closed nature of CH society in the 50s and 60s, leaving it after nearly half a lifetime was a wrench, much more so than any other caesura since.